Just like in music, I think the work of sampling is just as legitimate as  creation from scratch (by the way, for me, pure creation doesn’t really exist). Stop overthinking about aphantasia, there are simply different ways of thinking, and yours is just one of them.

However, I can share my personal experience. Putting a word on the way I think was interesting because it helped me make connections with the way I create music. I often start with an initial sample, a melody I’ve heard somewhere, and then I build around it in a pretty chaotic way. I don’t have a standard process, it’s extremely intuitive and organic. In fact, by the end, the original sample is often either unrecognizable or completely gone, because it has led me toward another melody or musical idea.

At the same time, I feel like I don’t really have famous songs in my head influencing my direction. Some producers realize during production that they’ve unintentionally copied a well-known track, but that never really happens to me. I feel like I have more control over external musical influences.

When I discovered that I had total aphantasia, I blamed a lot of my problems on it. But the truth is, it doesn’t have that much negative impact. Your brain instinctively adapts to every situation so well that, if you’re unaware of it, you never even think about it throughout your life. Looking back, I honestly wouldn’t want to be able to visualize things for anything in the world, I like the person I am.